Essays on Reported Well-being and Reporting Heterogeneity Issues.

Authors
Publication date
2013
Publication type
Thesis
Summary This thesis focuses on the use of self-assessments (of health, satisfaction. . . . on numerical or verbal scales) in economics. The first chapter uses well-being statements to study the extent of economic comparisons in India, particularly between castes. The results obtained confirm that comparisons have a deleterious effect on well-being. Furthermore, it appears that low-caste individuals are frustrated by the economic success of higher castes, while the latter do not derive any satisfaction from the situation of lower castes. The second chapter focuses on the extent to which individuals may differ in the way they use declarative scales to report their well-being. It proposes a new method to detect this declarative heterogeneity, and to correct for its effects. This method is used to check whether respondents differ in their use of the scale according to their income level. It appears that the richest respondents under-report variations in their well-being, which tends to bias the analyses strongly The third chapter studies the causes of declarative heterogeneity, focusing on self-reported health. It empirically evaluates the hypothesis that the interpretation of the scale depends on the distribution of health in the peer group. This hypothesis appears to be broadly valid. It also appears that other mechanisms may be at play. A final result is that if this declarative heterogeneity induces a bias, this bias remains limited in most situations of interest.
Topics of the publication
  • ...
  • No themes identified
Themes detected by scanR from retrieved publications. For more information, see https://scanr.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr